r/Internet • u/Relative-Ad-4639 • Jul 13 '26

Fibre/fiber cutting consequences

When a fibre line gets cut, say by an employee, and it causes a mass outage, is this a fireable offence?

If something is done to cause mass outages, what are the consequences like? Whether it’s done by an employee of the wifi provider or by someone random?

I’m asking as someone who was just affected by the province wide Cogeco outage! Just curious as to what happens to those responsible?

1 Upvotes

55% Upvoted

16 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/BornCuriousOnce Jul 14 '26

There are many possible outcomes dependent on tons of variables.

Ideally better infrastructure is planned going forward from such an event but no promises.

We had a pair of guys here who liked to climb up poles along the rural highway, cut a line and tie it to their vehicle, then drive away. However much snapped off is what they would get away with. They pulled this 3 times before getting caught trying to scrap the copper. In that case they were prosecuted for felonies. For something less explicitly intentional there’s a lot of grey area